Topic 1119 [media]: Media Appearances of WELLperns VI, S.F.Bay Area Division
#160 of 296: john markoff (johnm)
Wed Dec 20 '95 (14:49) 557 lines
Charles is certainly entitled to his opinion about our book, but I thought I
would take this opportunity to correct his inaccuracies.
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REVIEW OF TAKEDOWN ON THE COMPUTER UNDERGROUND DIGEST
The Mad-Scientist Myth Figure
A circumlocuitous review of _Takedown_ by Tsutomu Shimomura and John
Markoff (Hyperion, $24.95)
by Charles Platt
Perhaps it seems strange that a journalist should defend
herself by pleading ignorance of the subject that she chose
to write about. Still, we should give Katie Hafner credit
where it is due: she now seems genuinely repentant.
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Just for the record, Katie says that her remarks were taken out of
context here by Charles. For her actual views you might want to look at her
Esquire article on the subject, which is reprinted in a new paperback
version of Cyberpunk.
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The same can hardly be said for her ex-husband and ex-
collaborator John Markoff, who must have made well over half
a millions dollars by now, portraying Kevin Mitnick as an
arch-enemy of techno-society. If Markoff regrets the
"darkside hacker" label, he hasn't said much about it.
Unlike many hackers, Kevin Mitnick never looked for
publicity. He felt he should be paid for giving interviews,
and when Hafner and Markoff refused to come up with any
money, he refused to talk to them. He became famous--or
infamous--while doing his best to remain obscure.
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The darkside hacker label was created during the late 1980s by the
Southern California press. It is a label that I noted, but I didn't create.
However, he's right I don't regret using it. And also for the record, Kevin
Mitnick used to drive around in Las Vegas with a stack of copies of
Cyberpunk in the trunk of his car to give away to admirers. He is on record
as saying the book is "20 percent inaccurate."
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The key event that catalyzed this strange ascent to
notoriety occurred on July 4th, 1994, when a story by John
Markoff appeared on the front page of _The New York Times._
Headlined "Cyberspace's Most Wanted: Hacker Eludes F.B.I.
Pursuit," the text described Mitnick as "one of the nation's
most wanted computer criminals" and was accompanied with a
suitably menacing mug shot. The story was liberally spiced
with tidbits recycled from _Cyberpunk,_ but if you looked
more closely, there wasn't any actual news. Mitnick had
violated parole a year or so previously, had disappeared at
that time, and hadn't been seen since. That was all.
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This is really inaccurate. Kevin Mitnick had become notorious
nationally in the late 1980s as a result of his being arrested for attacks
on Digital Equipment Computers. A menacing mug shot? It was the only photo
available. No actual news? Not the way I remember it. The news was that he
was being pursued by the FBI (three agents full time), the California DMV,
US Marshalls, telco security, local police, etc. The further news was that
the FBI had told cellular telephone companies that they believed the
fugitive had stolen software from at least six cellular phone manufacturers.
I thought then, and still think, this merited a story. I also think the
story was a good yarn. Mitnick had succeeded in evading law enforcement for
more than a year - again.
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Why was this on the front page of a highly respected
newspaper? Maybe because of the scary implications: that a
weirdo who could paralyze vast computer networks was on the
loose, and law enforcement had been too stupid to catch him.
In reality, though, Mitnick has never been accused of
willfully damaging any hardware or data, and has never been
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Wrong again. He was accused of doing more than $100,000 damage at US
Leasing, a SF time sharing company in 1980. Their system was trashed by a
group that Mitnick was a member of. After that, at various other times he
cost companies tens of thousands of dollars trying to close the door on his
attacks. A further point is that I have no control over placement of my
stories in the paper.
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In _Cyberpunk,_ he was described as an omnipotent,
obsessive-compulsive, egotistical, vindictive sociopath who
used his computer to take revenge on the world that had
spurned him. He later claimed (in _2600_ magazine) that this
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This is a totally misreading of Cyberpunk. I invite anyone to read that
section of the book and see if that is the way he was portrayed.
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was "twenty percent fabricated and libelous."
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Maybe so, but I guess Kevin acknowledged 80 percent of what we wrote as
accurate... 8)
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So far as I can discover, the FBI didn't classify
Mitnick as one of America's most wanted; it was John Markoff
who chose to apply that label. Markoff went far beyond the
traditional function of a journalist who merely reports news;
he helped to create a character, and the character himself
became the news.
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Sorry, but I didn't create the character, Kevin did. He has now been
arrested six times in fifteen years. Each time, except for this last time,
he was given a second chance to get his act together. He chose not too. It
seems to me that he is an adult and makes choices. He chose to keep breaking
in to computers. He knew what the penalty was. So what's the problem?
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Unfortunately for Mitnick, this made him the target of a
hacker witch hunt. A few years ago, here in CuD, Jim Thomas
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A witch hunt? Give me a break. It was an article describing a law
enforcement hunt for a fugitive, who had been arrested five times
previously, convicted at least three times, and was known to be attacking
the computers of the nation's cellular telephone companies.
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This information probably wasn't worth much; Markoff told the
feds that Mitnick could probably be found stuffing himself
with junk food at the nearest Fatburger, whereas in fact
Mitnick was working out regularly, had slimmed down to normal
weight, and had become a vegetarian.
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Oh please. I was called by Kent Walker, the AUSA on the case during a
meeting at the Well. He asked me if I thought Mitnick was dangerous. I
responded that everything I knew about Mitnick had either been in Cyberpunk
or my July 4 1994 article, ie. in the public. I repeated the story of one
arrest in which Kevin ended up handcuffed in tears over the hood of the
detective's car. I gave no other information, nor got any.
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John Markoff's precise motives remain a mystery. We can,
however, learn something by examining his writing. In his
_Times_ article describing Mitnick's capture, he stated that
the hacker had been on a "long crime spree" during which he
had managed to "vandalize government, corporate and
university computer systems."
These are interesting phrases. "Crime spree" suggests a
wild cross-country caper involving robberies and maybe even a
shoot-out. In reality, Mitnick seems to have spent most of
his time hiding in an apartment, typing on a keyboard. The
word "vandalize" implies that he wantonly wrecked some
property; in reality, Mitnick caused no intentional damage to
anyone or anything.
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This is just not true. Kevin Mitnick was actively sharing system
vulnerabilities with other people on the net. That is about the most
damaging thing that could be done to the Internet community.
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When it came down to it, Markoff's journalism was long
on opinion and short on facts.
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Sort of like this review, I guess..... 8)
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I have a fantasy. In my fantasy, John Markoff bursts
into a room where Tsutomu Shimomura sits as solemn as a zen
master, peering impassively at a computer screen while he
types a Perl script. "Tsutomu, I have good news and bad
news!" Markoff exclaims. "The good news is, we sold the book
rights for three-quarters of a million. The bad news is, I
haven't got a clue what Mitnick was doing for the past two
years. What the hell are we going to write about?"
Shimomura doesn't even bother to look up. He gives a
barely perceptible shrug and says, "Me, of course."
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This is weird...
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Mitnick grew up in a lower-class single-parent household
and taught himself almost everything he knew about computers.
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Nice try. Kevin took lots of computer classes at various schools.
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Presumably because Markoff felt that some romantic
interest would help to sell the story, this book contains
revelations of a type normally reserved for Hollywood
celebrities or British royalty. While he was pursuing
Mitnick, Shimomura was also pursuing "Julia," the long-term
girlfriend of John Gilmore, one of the first employees at Sun
Microsystems in 1982 who subsequently co-founded the software
corporation Cygnus.
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The reason we described what happened at Toad Hall on Xmas was that the
attacks first came from toad.com while Tsutomu and Julia were there. If we
hadn't have been complete in our description someone would have charged us
with a cover up. Please remember that David Bank, a San Jose Mercury
reporter, spent several weeks pursuing the hypothesis that Tsutomu had
attack his own computers.
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Kevin Mitnick begins to seem likable by comparison. At
least he shows some irreverence, taunting Shimomura and
trying to puncture his pomposity. At one point, Mitnick
bundles up all the data he copied from Shimomura's computer
and saves it onto the system at Netcom where he knows that
Shimomura will find it. He names the file "japboy." At
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Yea, That Kevin is a real likeable guy.
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another point, in a private online communication (intercepted
by Shimomura without any lawful authorization) Mitnick
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Wrong. At the Well, Netcom and in Raleigh, Tsutomu, at all times was
operating under the exemptions granted Internet Service Providers by the
ECPA.
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Well, maybe so, but unlike Shimomura, Mitnick never
claimed to be heroic. Nor did he cause any intentional
"damage." Nor did he "attack," "pilfer," and "vandalize"
computer systems, even though these words are used repeatedly
throughout the book--in the same pejorative style that John
Markoff previously perfected in _The New York Times._
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Perjorative?? Yikes! I mean we could go to the dictionary.....
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All the charges except one have been dropped against
Kevin Mitnick. He may even be out of jail in time for the
Markoff/Shimomura book tour. In other words, the man
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Wrong. Kevin Mitnick is in jail in Los Angeles facing charges from
more than six United States Federal Districts. He may go on trial or he may
plea bargain.
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described in advance publicity for _Takedown_ as a threat to
global civilization will befree to go about his business--
because, in the end, he wasn't much of a threat at all.
Will this create an embarrassing schism between
_Takedown_ and reality? Probably not. Reality has been at
odds with the Mitnick myth for quite a while, but the myth is
stronger than ever.
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Myth and reality? I have been writing about Kevin Mitnick for a long
time, since 1981 to be precise, but I didn't create a myth, he created his
own story.
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